


hot to the touch, cold on the inside

by CorvusCaurinus



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Masturbation, Mentally Ill Character, One-Sided Attraction, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:38:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1660064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvusCaurinus/pseuds/CorvusCaurinus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his head the colonel rubs his fingers together in slow motion, fabric and skin dragging against each other, and a spark catches and ignites in Ed's lower stomach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hot to the touch, cold on the inside

**Author's Note:**

> My first FMA fic, set immediately after _Flame vs. Fullmetal,_ because there's something so beautifully gutwrenching about the fact that Roy and Ed have such a huge evolution in their dynamic -- Roy deciding to trust Ed with the information about Marcoh; Ed deciding not to gloat over his victory or push Roy about his trauma; both of them expressing a new degree of trust, faith, and gratefulness toward each other -- just before Ed finds Marcoh and learns that Roy killed his best friend's parents.
> 
> Thanks to Fuchsia/tumblr user royyed for always being willing to talk and for inspiring me to write down my headcanons and RoyEd feelings in general.
> 
> **Content warnings** for the aftermath of canonical violence, mild mention of dysphoria, and descriptions of the physical and emotional symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Winry's mused aloud more than once that the only thing more stunted than Ed's growth pattern is his ability to deal with human emotions. It’s not a particularly biting insult because Winry says a lot of shit that doesn’t really mean anything, but Ed’s still spitefully cataloged both parts of that statement at the front of his list of Things Winry Is Wrong About because:

1) his growth is _not_ stunted (changes in height, weight, and muscle mass should be expected to occur at varying paces throughout puberty and Ed isn't even sixteen yet for fuck's sake, plus it's not his fault that biology is a son of a bitch and stuck him with an unconventional adolescence in addition to the wrong pair of sex chromosomes), and

2) Ed is as attuned to Al's emotions as he is to his own. Possibly moreso. When the person you spend the overwhelming majority of your time with doesn't have any facial expressions you don’t have any choice but to train yourself to pay attention to minute changes in tone of voice and body language.

What with the battle assessment against Mustang, the ensuing cleanup, and the long, guiltily silent walk back to the hotel after dropping off the cat, he and Al haven’t really had time to talk yet today. Not too unusual, nothing that would seem suspicious to an outsider, but Ed can feel that the air between them is clotted with bitten-back words, and something shadowy is crawling around under Ed’s skin.

The door to their hotel room barely finishes closing before Ed's fighting his way out of his filthy clothes. He throws his coat somewhere and strips off his shirts (both of them black and sleeveless, the inner one hugged tight to his skin and the outer loose enough to make his torso look shapeless) as he starts the water running in the bath. He moves fast, because if he’s moving then there’s less time to _think_ and anyway he _really_ wants to flop down in a hot bath and scrub today off him so he and Al can start over in the morning. His trousers are charred and caked with so much filth that the worn leather has gone stiff; Ed’s scowling as he wriggles out of them, thinking of sending the colonel a bill for the most expensive replacement pair he can find, when Al finally says, “Brother.”

In a way it’s almost a relief.

Ed stands as straight as he can (his flesh leg aches from a particularly intense scrape with one of Mustang’s nuclear inferno death blasts), squares his shoulders like he’s bracing for a fight, and Al—

—tilts his helmet quizzically, and then says, “I’m going for a walk, brother.”

Ed keeps staring at him while behind him the water thunders; Al looks back from behind inscrutable metal. He’d waited till Ed was practically naked to say anything, so it was fairly obvious he wanted to be alone.

_You okay?_ — two words, and Ed can’t get them out. Because he already knows the answer, and he knows that he can’t keep putting this off, he’s eventually going to have to own up to everything he’s done to his brother…but not tonight. Not yet.

“Okay. I’ll be…” He waves in the general direction of the bathroom, but his brother’s already at the door. Al makes a soft noise (could be assent, could be scorn) in reply, and then he’s gone.

Ed sags.

By now the bath is close enough to full that Ed almost reconsiders getting in at all. The thought of sitting still with his own thoughts for the time it’ll take him to get clean is almost nauseating; he needs to snap himself out of his head, _do_ something so he can stop feeling so creepy and focus on preparing for tomorrow. But he feels like his entire body is one big sunburn , and besides, unlike Al he doesn't have an unlimited store of energy, and right now he's bone-tired in a way that doesn't have as much to do with the match against Mustang as it does _everything else._

The hot water looks inviting right up until the moment his skin actually makes contact with it. He swears; apparently Mustang managed to scorch him a bit more extensively than he'd thought. Getting in the tub feels like sinking into a vat of acid, but he submerges anyway, gritting his teeth and staying under for a long minute before he lets himself sit up. He tries to turn his thoughts back to productive things, but his smarting burns are distracting, and anyway he still needs to reorder his view of the world so today’s events make any kind of sense.

The match. He still can’t quite believe it worked out. There’s got to be some hidden catch somewhere that he’s missing. Thinking about it makes Ed's stomach flip; Mustang's admission has allowed him to unravel another string of possibilities from the rat's nest of rumor and hearsay around the Stone, and maybe it's false hope but it feels like they're finally getting closer, like there's something different about this lead on Marcoh that might be what he needs to get Al's body back.

Ed's always known that Mustang is a devious fucker. The entire basis of their relationship is lies and subterfuge: Mustang pretends he doesn't know why Ed's sweet baby brother only appears in public wearing a full suit of antique armor, Ed pretends he gives a shit about the military, and somehow they manage to collaboratively hammer their mismatched stories into appropriate shape to keep the higher-ups off their backs and let them pursue their own goals. Or, as it all too often seems, Mustang's goals. 

But this is a piece of work Ed would have never expected. Turning a blind eye to Ed's sins is one thing — Mustang can use him, after all — but letting Marcoh slip by when, as far as Ed can see, there was nothing for Mustang to gain and everything to lose is something else entirely.

Ed's not sure what to do with that information. 

Now that the initial pain of submersion has faded to a dull sting, the heat from the water seeps into his bones and muscles, soothing the aches in his automail ports. He sinks all the way under again and scrubs at his hair, arches his back and rolls his shoulders to work out the tightness in his muscles. Though the sensation of heat against his burns has faded from “howling agony” to “ignorable inconvenience,” his entire body still feels raw, fragile, like his skin is too small. _Fucking Mustang._

It's a somewhat unsettling thought, because he's not really angry. Not even irritated. This isn't real pain; he's endured worse from people he cares about more than Mustang (Winry flits back into his mind, followed by the menacing shadow of Teacher). The insults and complaints come into his head from force of habit, but the rage behind them has burned out, their rough edges worn down over time like worry stones. 

Ed doesn't have a name for whatever he's feeling now.

The colonel's always been so infuriatingly put-together that it's made Ed ache to put a crack in that stupid mask of his, and today he'd actually succeeded. What's more, the person under the mask turned out to be — well, a person.

Mustang's face at the end of Ed's blade, twisted with fear and revulsion — that's something that hits Ed hard in the center of his chest, because he _recognizes_ that feeling. It's as much a part of him as the steel bolted into his bones. And to see it mirrored in Mustang's face, of all places...

Oh.

Ed's whole body _jolts_ like he's been startled on the edge of sleep.

Oh, _fuck._

He's thought about the colonel like that before, but only in brief, impulsive flashes — seeing Mustang bend to pick up a file and spitefully picturing himself belting Mustang hard across the ass; wondering what the rasp of ignition cloth would feel like against the inside of his mouth; distracting himself from the tedious drone of Mustang's voice during a particularly agonizing lecture by studying the span of Mustang's shoulders and waist which somehow turned into imagining Mustang's weight pressing over Ed's back, his cynical tone sliding into something lower and darker as he spoke against Ed's shoulder. Never further than that — he's always slammed the door on the thoughts as soon as he became aware of having them. But...

In his head the colonel rubs his fingers together in slow motion, fabric and skin dragging against each other, and a spark catches and ignites in Ed's lower stomach.

Ed takes a deep breath and swallows hard, throat rasping on steam.

Al probably won't be back for an hour or two, and it's been a while since Ed's...done this. A life spent traveling within arms' length of your sleepless little brother doesn't exactly lend itself to lots of free time for that kind of stuff. Ed scowls and thunks his head against the back of the tub a couple times, trying to shake the images of Mustang's hands and Mustang's body loose from where they're clinging stubbornly to the insides of his eyelids, but the bath is hot and his skin is sensitive and now that he's thinking about it his traitorous body _wants_ more intensely than it has in a long time. Fuck fuck _fuck,_ this is so wrong; he should be strategizing for tomorrow's hunt for Marcoh instead of thinking with his dick, and anyway Ed doesn't even _like_ the smug fuck half the time, a piece of information and a couple hours of clearing rubble together doesn't change _anything..._

...except that maybe that's the point.

It's that thought more than anything that makes the decision for him. Ed's tired of chasing himself in circles, of wavering and hesitating and being more afraid of the crap in his head than the monsters aiming for his throat. For fuck's sake, it's not like he's doing anything wrong, he just — needs a moment to unwind — and Mustang is _there,_ for whatever reason, and _none of this is going to change anything._

And so he clears his throat, forcibly pries his thoughts away from the roiling tide of anxiety bubbling somewhere under his diaphragm, lets his thighs fall open a bit wider, and slides his hand — no, _the colonel's hand, broad and strong, sliding down to cup against him_ and his hips spike up off the bottom of the tub without warning. Ed splutters a little, caught off guard by the intensity of his body's response, and again there’s something shadowy in his head suggesting that maybe this isn’t such a good idea—

—and Ed really, really does not give a shit.

Deep breath. Start over. It's quiet in the bathroom, but it's easy to imagine the familiar tread of military boots on the tiles as Mustang walks over and kneels down beside the tub. Ed frowns, not liking that; it's too realistic, puts too much distance between them and gives Mustang too much control. Again, then: Mustang in front of him in the bath, smirking in that conspiratorial way as he leans toward Ed.

He's never seen Mustang shirtless; before today he had never even seen him in less than full military uniform. Still, the image of Mustang with the first two buttons of his shirt undone and his sleeves rolled up is enough for Ed — the skin at his throat had been smooth, his forearms had looked surprisingly strong for someone with a desk job in a backwater like East City, and when he'd moved after Ed he'd been agile. He'd be in shape, then — more evidence that the worthless slacker image is an act. Wide shoulders, arm muscles firm, with just the right amount of give under Ed's flesh hand, face soft and hands steady as they grip Ed's knees and slowly guide his legs apart. 

Ed reaches down and presses his thumbs into the skin just above his scar tissue, working the flesh carefully to wring out the lingering aches without irritating his old injuries. In the dark behind his eyelids he replaces his hands with Mustang's, pictures the colonel's cheek resting against the side of his automail knee, his breath fogging against the metal. 

Ed's — _Mustang's_ hands move further up Ed's thigh, fingers digging in painful-good. Ed shivers and squirms against the bottom of the tub, unable to help feeling a little ridiculous. It's usually not this easy to get so worked up without touching his dick, even if it _has_ been a while. He's acting like a randy teenager...which, uh, _is_ technically what he is, but that doesn't make it any less _humiliating_. 

Without meaning to, he pictures Mustang smirking down at him like he always does when he's manipulated Ed into doing something he wants — and shudders hard at the unexpected spasm between his legs. "Fuck that," Ed says out loud, because like _hell_ he's going to be another one of Mustang's groupies. But there’s no real heat in it, and in his head Mustang’s smirk presses down onto Ed’s shoulder, and just for now he can go along without a fight.

Ed strokes his inner thigh with the tips of his automail fingers, gasping a little when his pinky glides too high. He lets go of his left leg completely and cards flesh fingers through his pubic hair, holding still for a moment and just breathing at the ceiling. _Can I?_ Mustang asks, because this Mustang, the warm unguarded one he’d gotten just a glimpse of in the moment he told Ed about Marcoh, actually cares about what Ed wants. _Yes._

Electricity crackles up his spine when his fingers smooth over the edges of his folds; even through the bath water he can feel how slick he is, and he sighs. Fingers up, spreading himself out (his face is on fire in a way that has nothing to do with Mustang's flames), curling against his cock. Ed whines softly and spreads his thighs so both knees touch the sides of the tub, allowing him to narrow the gap between him and Mustang until he can imagine breath on his face and hips bumping into the backs of his legs. 

Ed starts stroking himself in earnest, licks the sweat from his upper lip and pictures Mustang mirroring the action, his face close enough to Ed's that Ed can almost feel Mustang's mouth moving on his wet skin. Mustang murmurs something unintelligible, the words getting lost somewhere under the push of Ed's fingers and blooming swirl of hot-hard-good- _more_ that's gradually filling up his head, but Ed doesn't give a shit because what matters isn't the words but rather the warmth and praise in Mustang's voice.

Drawing on more memories now: Mustang's slow smile, the one that _doesn't_ make him look like a total sanctimonious prick and that Ed hardly ever sees — the curving line of his back as he'd stretched in the dusty light of sunset, bitching quietly about how lifting all this rubble was ruining his spine — his shoulders without the military jacket, shirt sweaty and adhering to his skin — the surprised punch of his breath so so close to Ed's ear when Ed's blade ripped through his glove—

Ed's breathing hard, adrenaline rushing like it always does when he's skirting the edge of something dangerous. He feels scarily exposed like this, open and vulnerable, and he's so turned on he's _aching._ Deep, unsteady breath — Mustang looking at him from under wet hair, tiny lopsided smile — and Ed presses the heel of his hand hard over his cock, rocks up, lets the tips of two fingers tease the edge of his hole. _Fullmetal,_ Mustang says, mouth hot and pliant and sliding up Ed's jaw to brush over his lips, and then, there, _Edward,_ and Ed bites his lip and fucks up against his hand, imagines Mustang's fingertips finding his knuckles and then moving slowly down, sliding between Ed's fingers—

Ed makes a noise, so in his head Mustang makes a louder one. He draws it out, makes Mustang's mouth fall open and forehead clench as he _moans,_ hips rolling against Ed's. That image sends Ed's pelvis spiking up again, and suddenly the fantasy falls apart; Mustang's body crashes into his and Ed's breath stutters out in desperate gasps because he _wants_ so furiously it makes his mouth water even though he knows he can't, shouldn't — he wants the bend and curve of Mustang's body, he wants Mustang's mouth, his cock, he wants Mustang to leave searing fingerprints inside him, everything, _anything,_ just give him something to hold onto to prove that they're both real people and that everything he's been clawing after isn't always going to fall to ash in his hands—

And then Ed's making hoarse, wrecked noises and pressing his face against the side of the tub so hard it hurts while he comes around his fingers and tries not to shake so hard he falls off the planet.

The trembly aftershocks don't even have time to fade before Ed realizes that this was a shitty idea. He still aches all over, but now there's a new layer of sensitivity over the pain that makes him shiver inside, and the worst part is that every twinge results in another thought of who put it there. He wants to curl up at the bottom of the tub and sleep for ten years, only he can't because he's got to pull his shit together and refocus on getting Al's body back. Instead, he finishes washing himself, gets dressed, and leaves the bathroom on autopilot, feeling shaken and almost feverish. Mustang lurks around in his head like the sneaky bastard he is; Ed's too tired to chase him out, so he squashes his weary feelings of guilt and lets himself feel broad hands against his skin as he climbs into bed. 

A hazy interval of time passes in which Ed's not sure if he's awake or asleep, and then the door opens and Ed realizes he's been subconsciously waiting for Al to get back before he passes out completely. 

Al stares at Ed for a moment before he turns and bolts the door — quietly, even though he can see Ed is awake. Questions and half-apologies flicker around Ed's head like dying moths, but he can't voice any of them around the concrete block in his throat, so he rolls over and faces the opposite wall. There's another short silence, and then Al says, "Brother?" in a way that sounds horribly concerned. 

Ed's voice still isn't working, so he just grunts. 

"I'm sorry about taking the cat."

The image of Mustang's stricken face flashes across Ed's thoughts again, bringing with it that weird, bitter feeling of kinship. Ed could laugh if it wasn't so fucking pathetic, but instead he bites his lip and closes his eyes. _Al's_ sorry. Al's the one who feels bad about the fact that his big brother destroyed his body and dragged — _drags_ — him across half the country for years instead of letting him have a normal life, a home, a pet. Of _course._

When Ed finally manages to speak, he sounds almost normal. "It's okay. I'm sorry we couldn't do anything to help." Pause, then, trying to slide back behind his carefree, cocky shield, "You're good, Al."

Armor shifts in the dark as Al moves to sit on the other bed, and Ed hopes Al can read the double meaning in the words. Ed listens to the sounds of his brother settling in for the night in tense silence, feeling completely wrung-out and knowing he doesn't have any right to feel that way.

In the morning he and Mustang will go back to their usual interactions of snarking at each other through layers of military protocol and transparent untruths. In the morning they'll look for Marcoh and ( _please, please_ ) get one step closer to getting Al's body back. Years of hopes repeatedly raised and dashed have taught Ed that they'll probably have to fight and beg and claw for anything Marcoh knows, maybe drag out their whole dirty life story again in the hopes that this time it just might pan out. In the morning. Right now, though, he's too tired to feel anything but emptiness. 

He'll deal with everything else tomorrow.


End file.
